Bishops to move on from RH bill defeat

The fight against the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill may have been lost in Congress, but Catholic bishops are moving on to other venues to scrap the measure slammed as a paving the way to abortion.

"Conscience attempted to speak but it has been stifled!" Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines Vice President Socrates Villegas said in a statement.

While accepting the fate of the bill which is set to enter the penultimate stage of legislation, Villegas noted that the approval in both houses of Congress Monday does not make the RH bill any more acceptable.

"They might have won through the tyranny of numbers but it does not mean that they are right," the archbishop of Lingayen-Dagupan said.

Other Catholic groups, including one led by former Manila Mayor Lito Ateinza, have meanwhile hinted at challenging before the Supreme Court the legislation certified as urgent by President Benigno Aquino III.

Villegas, meanwhile, urged his diocese to move on through intensifying their their efforts for the moral spiritual education of the youth.